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MONA pier and stairs by Gary Houston –

Top 10 Outstanding Facts about Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania

The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA) is an art museum located within the Moorilla winery on the Berriedale peninsula in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. It is the largest privately funded museum in the Southern Hemisphere. MONA houses ancient, modern, and contemporary art from the David Walsh collection. Noted for its central themes of sex and death, the museum has been described by Walsh as a “subversive adult Disneyland”.

MONA was officially opened on 21 January 2011. Along with its frequently updated indoor collection, Mona also hosts the annual Mona Foma and Dark Mofo music and arts festivals which showcase large-scale public art and live performances.

Here are the top 10 outstanding facts about the Museum of Old and New Art, Tasmania.

1. MONA was founded by Tasmanian millionaire David Walsh

The precursor to MONA, the Moorilla Museum of Antiquities, was founded in 2001 by Tasmanian millionaire David Walsh. It closed on 20 May 2006 to undergo $75 million in renovations.

The new museum was officially opened on 21 January 2011, coinciding with the third MOFO festival. The afternoon opening party was attended by 1,350 invited guests. 2,500 members of the public were selected by random ballot for the evening event which included performances by The DC3, True Live, The Scientists of Modern Music, Wire, Health, and The Cruel Sea.

2. There are no windows at the Museum of Old and New Art

Gilbert and George Exhibition, MONA by Ché Lydia Xyang –

The single-story MONA building appears at street level to be dominated by its surroundings, but its interior possesses a spiral staircase that leads down to three larger levels of labyrinthine display spaces built into the side of the cliffs around the Berriedale peninsula.

There are no windows and the atmosphere is intentionally ominous. On entering the museum, visitors descend a “seemingly endless flight of stairs”, an experience one critic compared with “going down into Petra”. To see the art, the visitor must work back upwards towards the surface, a trajectory that has been contrasted with the descending spiral that many visitors follow in New York’s Guggenheim Museum.

3. Fender Katsalidis is the architecture firm behind the museum

Fender Katsalidis (FK) is an architecture firm that originated in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, and now has additional studios in Sydney and Brisbane. Founded by Karl Fender and Nonda Katsalidis, the firm has been notable since the early 1990s, producing many landmark buildings in Melbourne and other Australian cities. 

Katsalidis’s architecture for the museum has been praised as not only fulfilling its function as a showcase for a collection but also succeeding as it extends and magnifies into an experience. There is a sense that the work, the lighting, the space, and the materiality have been choreographed with subtlety and skill into a singular if hugely idiosyncratic whole.

4. MONA offers an unusual membership program called Eternity Membership

MONA main underground hall by Ché Lydia Xyang –

The Museum of Old and New Art offers a membership program called eternity membership, which not only includes lifetime free admission but notably earns members the right to be cremated and their remains housed in the MONA Cemetery.

Operational costs of A$8 million per annum are underpinned by the winery, brewery, restaurant, and hotel on the same site. In May 2011, it was announced that the museum would end its policy of free entry and introduce an entry fee to interstate and overseas visitors while remaining free for Tasmanians.

5. The museum houses work from David Walsh’s private collection valued at more than $100 million

The museum houses over 1,900 artistic works from David Walsh’s private collection. Notable works in its inaugural exhibition, Monanism, included Australia’s largest modernist artwork, Sidney Nolan’s Snake mural, displayed publicly for the first time in Australia; Wim Delvoye’s Cloaca Professional, a machine that replicates the human digestive system and turns food into faeces, excreting it daily.

 Stephen Shanabrook’s On the road to heaven the highway to hell remains of a suicide bomber cast in dark chocolate, and Chris Ofili’s The Holy Virgin Mary, a painting created partially with elephant dung.

6. The artworks on display are in non-chronological order and without museum labels

“Snake” by Australian artist Sidney Nolan, is the centerpiece of the Museum of Old and New Art by jeffowenphotos –

Visitors are given the option of using free headphones and an iPod-like device called the ‘O’, which has an in-built GPS that senses where its holder is located and displays information about artworks nearby. 

Users of the O can select different interpretations of any given piece: Summary (a brief description of the work and its artist); Art Wank (curator’s notes); Gonzo (Walsh’s personal opinions and stories), Ideas (quotes and talking points); and Media (oftentimes interviews with artists). 

Walsh also commissioned Damian Cowell, frontman of satirical Melbourne band TISM, to write and record songs about certain works for the O device. They were released as a free album, Vs Art, with MONA’s 2010 book Monanisms.

7. MONA hosts the annual outdoor music festival

MONA FOMA is an annual music and arts festival held in January in Tasmania, Australia, curated by Violent Femmes member Brian Ritchie. It is billed as Tasmania’s largest contemporary music festival and showcases the work of artists in a broad range of art forms, including sound, noise, dance, theatre, visual art, performance, and new media.

Dark Mofo is the winter version of the MONA FOMA festival, also held in Tasmania. With many of its events taking place at night, it celebrates the darkness of the southern winter solstice and features many musical acts, large-scale light installations, and a winter feast. Due to its pagan influence and darker themes, it has been aligned with the Tasmanian Gothic aesthetic in literature and art.

8. MONA is a major tourist attraction in a small city, Hobart

One of the MONA pavillions by Gary Houston –

MONA has not only changed how Australians from other states and territories view Tasmania, it has also changed the face of Hobart quite literally. 

Many visitors approach MONA by ferry, its rust and concrete colors looming but not out of place on the River Derwent.

Jennifer Nichols from the Australian Institute of Architects said the building responded to the landscape at Berriedale but was very different from other architecture in Tasmania at the time.

9.  MONA influenced other museums to embrace a less strict, curatorial approach

Justin O’Connor, a professor of cultural economy at the University of South Australia, said there was nothing similar to MONA when it opened.

“Even the contemporary art museums in Sydney, in Brisbane, and in Melbourne, none of them had the same feel that MONA introduced into Australia,” he said.

Professor O’Connor said whereas publicly funded museums had been leaning towards being more family-friendly, MONA had been unashamedly theatrical and dark from the start. “It allowed museums to take a much more adult or sophisticated view of the audience.”

10. The Museum of Old and New Art changed the tourism landscape in Hobart  the past 10 years

It’s been 10 years since the Museum of Old and New Art opened in the northern Hobart suburb of Berriedale, an area with nice views of the Derwent River. Personnel involved in the hospitality industry for over a decade, clearly state that it was a turning point for them. 

Locals associate the tourism boom in their city to the Museum of Old and New Art. In unison, the tourism and hospitality industries in Hobart have grown significantly as a result of the Museum of Old and New Art.